The Gospel of Inclusion? An Assessment

If you hang around certain circles of the church long enough, it’s hard to miss the central role the idea of “inclusion” plays in their daily life and theology. Everyone, it is said, is included in the community, a maxim usually contrasted with more judgmental versions of Christianity. This takes a number of forms, depending on the setting, ranging from the selection of leaders to the practice of open communion (the forgoing of baptism as a necessary prerequisite to receive). God accepts everyone, and perhaps the worst thing one can be today is exclusive, a label that harkens back to elitist, sectarian cults. Yet something appears to have been lost amid the shift in theology and rhetoric – and not necessarily for the better.

The theology of inclusion places the ever-expanding borders of the church as the heartbeat of its message. The love of God has no bounds to its scope and the corresponding expression of human love likewise embraces people from all walks of life, especially the marginalized “other”. Jesus embodied such love through his ministry to those believed to be outside of the covenant. Paul, driven by a belief in the equality of all persons, extended the bounds of the church through the inclusion of the Gentiles. The church, then, is to continue the mission of God by likewise welcoming all people into the inclusive love of God embodied by the community itself; the practice of evangelism is reframed as the practice of hospitality. The more diverse the church becomes (usually defined along the lines of race, economic status, and gender), the more vibrant its communal life and the stronger its witness grows.

There is an admirable self-perpetuating logic to this Gospel of inclusion. Through the encounter with the now-included other, the horizon of one’s understanding broadens to enable the repentance of one’s previous narrow bigotry. Accordingly, God is to be found through this encounter with the neighbor and one becomes more inclusive through the practice of inclusion and subsequent encounter with the outsider. This undoubtedly mirrors much of daily life experience. The encounter of a foreign entity creates the possibility for new understanding, similar to how learning a new subject reevaluates previous understandings or, negatively, how it’s difficult to have sympathy for someone or something one doesn’t know much about. As Mark Twain once said: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness”.

With deep roots in 1960’s political ideology, a (mis)reading of Paul Tillich, the New Perspective on Paul, and Historical Jesus studies, the doctrine of inclusion is not a novel idea. What is relatively novel, however, is the recent ubiquity of this new gospel and its rival claim to be the gospel in distinction to the outdated ideas of judgment and forgiveness. Indeed, missing from the equation of inclusion seems to be any form of personal evaluation or judgment. Grace is given without distinction of persons, but there is no mismatch between the recipients of grace and what is given.

If you peel back the layers of familiar rhetoric, what lies beneath the gospel of inclusion is the conviction that everyone, in fact, deserves the grace of God by virtue of their being human (created in the image of God). Having cast aside outdated notions of sin and judgment, the inclusion that God offers turns out to be more of a personal realization of something which has always been true. God has no enemies and no one is ungodly.

By contrast, the gospel of forgiveness shouldbe inclusive, albeit for different reasons. If the grace of God in Christ is given to all, this grace is given to all people precisely because it is given to ungodly sinners deserving of death (Rom. 4:5). Under the gospel of forgiveness, there are no longer any human givens or evaluations of worth, like gender, ethnicity, or economic status (Gal. 3:28), because God deals with humanity according to the more fundamental realities of sin and death. Here, there is not a mutual acceptance of difference within the cornucopia of the community, but a recognition of a sameness before God which, in turn, unites strangers to one another as fellow servants.

The gospel of inclusion may sound like good news, inasmuch as it bypasses moral judgments altogether. Indeed, it is preferable to the gleefully repressive exclusion one all too often encounters in legalistic/fundamentalist/dogmatic circles. Yet loosed of its moorings to notions of sin and grace, the preaching of inclusion can become a new Law of personal practice and communal ethos. Jesus’ boundary-crossing ministry is reduced to an example for us to follow. God is inclusive of all people, and we must be as well… or else. This practice becomes the means of grace as we encounter God through our encounter with the marginalized other. Do these things (be inclusive), and you will live.

Moreover, the preaching of inclusion seems to take the stratifications of society as a given; it essentially depends upon the world’s oppressive social order for its continued vitality and existential traction. In this way, inclusion qua inclusion may paradoxically strengthen the social order through the mutual acceptance of difference. The gospel of forgiveness, on the other hand, subverts the present social order by undercutting worldly evaluative criteria entirely. All are sinners in the hands of a gracious God, a thesis that provocatively has no relation to whether one is rich, poor, powerful, or oppressed.

But perhaps more damningly, the difference in practice between inclusion and forgiveness can be a devastating one for personal relationships as the line between wrongdoing and interpersonal difference becomes erased altogether. Stripped of the possibility of evaluative criteria (or judgment) of the rightness or wrongness of actions, the interpersonal practice of inclusion becomes a matter of tolerance and understanding of the other. This might sound attractive to those living under constant judgment, but the net result is still unsatisfactory. Sometimes the weight of one’s guilt cannot be explained away. Sometimes the injuries done to others are overwhelming and their grip cannot be loosened by the well-meaning hug of communal acceptance. To be accepted by another without a recognition of wrongdoing leaves one in the insecure place of wondering whether they’re really known at all. The transgressor in the grip of a guilty conscience does not simply need to be accepted; they need to be forgiven.

To view this from the standpoint of the victim, if misdeeds are not manifestations of sin that can be forgiven, they instead become expressions of the other that must be better understood and accepted (“that’s just who I am”). The transgressor is not guilty of wrongdoing so much as misunderstanding. Rather than absolved, they must be sympathized with by way of pseudo-psychology: they had a rough childhood, or they’re really stressed right now, or are lacking emotional intelligence, etc.

The act of forgiving someone else, meanwhile, acknowledges the injustice of the situation and diffuses its power over both the victim and sinner. Tolerating or accepting such a thing eventually leads to apathetic indifference, passive-aggressive rage, or victim-blaming by the transgressor (“it’s not my problem you can’t accept me”).

To be clear, while inclusion and forgiveness should go hand-in-hand, they are all-too-often presented in contemporary theology as mutually, er, exclusive alternatives by both sides of the proverbial aisle. More legalistic theologies of forgiveness fail to mine the radicality of its message, i.e., the preaching of God’s unconditional forgiveness necessarily entails a recalibration of worldly values and distinctions. Conversely, self-proclaimed inclusive churches seek to weed out notions of judgment at the expense of the gospel itself, while introducing dangerous, unforeseen implications for the practice of love.

The gospel is a dangerous concept when taken seriously, but far too often the riskiness of grace is mitigated to render it null and void altogether.

Share this:

Related

5 comments

This is good. Or rather, can I say this is a good start? Some of the people I have disappointed the most over the last year became upset with me when they realized that my expressing the radically inclusive nature of Jesus’ grace and forgiveness was not the same as expressing the culture’s desire to dismiss notions of sin and merely announce that “God has no enemies and no one is ungodly.”

So when I say this is a good start I mean I hope Mockingbird will help to provide language, conversations, and examples in the culture that help me tread a path somewhere between legalistic law-based living and a law of inclusion that can become just as stifling as what it replaces. This is so difficult for us who are exchanging the lies for the truth in hopes of worshipping Jesus.

This is really helpful. It brings to mind so many of the church mission statements I’ve encountered. They are chock full of inclusivity and radical welcome, when what they should say is, “All sinners are welcomed here.”

Very thoughtful but a sad analysis. The ‘gospel’ of inclusion is the gospel. The stratification of society is a permanent, human reality alive and well in Jesus’ life. The gospel itself falls apart without the stratification of society: tax collectors, harlots, Romans, Pharisees, Samaritans, lepers, demoniacs, shepherds, women at the well… Inclusion is not an idea that allows everyone to do anything any time. It means that in a world where people are treated like second class citizens, all people need to experience God’s love as Jesus did for those he encountered. They weren’t let off the hook if they sinned – just loved.

Publications

About

WHAT: Mockingbird seeks to connect the Christian faith with the realities of everyday life in fresh and down-to-earth ways.

WHY: Are we called Mockingbird? The name was inspired by the mockingbird’s peculiar gift for mimicking the cries of other birds. In a similar way, we seek to repeat the message we have heard – God’s word of grace and forgiveness.

HOW: Via every medium available! At present this includes (but is not limited to) a daily weblog, weekly podcasts, a quarterly print magazine, semi-annual conferences, and an ongoing publications initiative.

WHO: At present, we employ four full-time staff, David Zahl, Ethan Richardson, Margaret Pope and CJ Green, and four part-time, Sarah Condon, Bryan Jarrell, Luke Roland and Marcy Hooker. They are helped and supported by a large number of contributing volunteers and writers. Our board of directors is chaired by The Rev. Aaron Zimmerman.

WHERE: Our offices are located at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, VA.

WHEN: Mockingbird was incorporated in June 2007 and is currently in its 12th year of operation.

Online Giving

The work of Mockingbird is made possible by the gifts of private donors and churches. Our fundraising burden for 2019 is roughly $360,000, and with virtually no overhead, your gifts translate directly into mission and ministry. Can you help? Please feel free to email us at info@mbird.com if you have any questions or would like more information.

As a convenience, we are set up to accept online donations via Paypal. This method will allow you to give with a credit card, in any amount you wish. Simply click on the button below and follow the instructions.